The Barbaric Side of Justice

Claims by families of workers who simply went to other countries to lay brick, and ended up executed or sentenced to hang like pre-French revolutionary rogues are not stories from past times and past societies. In many cases, the people legally licensed to protect society with limited powers to execute their duties go beyond their legislated rights to such a degree that the mental state and actions of criminals fall upon them when they abuse their judicial powers. A license to kill does not exist, but with union protections and the legal and political resources of the state protecting all peace officers, it can lead to abuses by police, soldiers and all enshrined with the duty to protect without limits or incentives to always remain professional and sensible in the operation of their powers.

Currently three Mexican brothers had lost one of their last appeals to stay the death penalty in Malaysia where they were arrested under drug trafficking charges. Claimed by their families to be simple brick workers employed abroad, drug charges in Malaysia include death by hanging as a mandatory sentence. Whether guilty or not, to hang someone is an action that created some the first arguments against such a punishment due to the barbaric nature of hanging a human being. The Mexican consulate in Malaysia does not claim to contest the charges, but is trying to give support to the brothers to avoid the penalty of death by such horrific means. Other states should assist Mexico in the realization of the rights of these three brothers, as even if they committed the offense, Mexicans, nor Malaysians nor anyone should be hung by the neck until death anywhere in any country. As violent as some drug traffickers can become, to hang an individual under a justice system in that old barbaric manner does not produce any positive results for a society and simply competes with the barbarity given out by cartels against their own rivals.

While Malaysia is not the basis for many justice systems in many countries, cases such as the execution of a Brazilian national after the 2005 London Tube bombings shows how a police service can turn ignorance into murder by an officer through collective negligence and a deep seeded and well hidden bias to those different than themselves. Through collective blunder and an ignorant blood thirst by armed London police, a suspected tube bomber was mistakenly assumed to be a possible terrorist a day after the bombings, in reality he was a simple electrician from Brazil. He was assaulted by many officers, and once held, was executed by discharging seven bullets into his head. Inquiries by officials after the incident lead to many conflicting reports and hidden information on the case, until the brutality of the incident became public information. For executing the victim and hiding much of the information on the incident, the police service was dealt harsh criticisms of their actions and ordered to pay a violation linked to a workplace accident charge. This was tantamount to having to read a critical essay on how they were naughty and to pay a sum they could easily afford, as it was taken from tax payers. While several peace officers were clearly guilty of criminal negligence in the execution of an innocent individual, the suspicion of the victim as a terrorist due to his appearance and recent events at the time justified their actions, but only justified it to themselves. Protections by their unions, lawyers and political motivations allowed this barbaric execution to take place without consequence. The response to this incident did nothing to prevent such an act to take place in the future, and surely it will re-occur.

The playbook for keeping peace officers away from being accused of criminal offenses is currently being used in the recent shooting of a Canadian teen in Toronto last month. Being trapped alone on a streetcar with a small three inch knife, the teen was shot three times initially, then shot another six times and then tasered. This incident was caught on tape by a few citizens of Toronto, and the response to the killing of the teen shocked locals more than any incident with the police in Canadian history. The video shows one officer executing the teen without waiting for assistance or any means to detain him in a non- lethal manner. Being caught on video and viewed by the peers of the young man gave proof to all young Torontonians that if you are young and make a small mistake one night, the police have the right to kill you. The response to your execution will be a hollow apology and the assurance that someone will write a small essay on the incident and that it will likely happen again. No one, nor police or soldiers have the right to execute an individual because they are negligent. A soldier’s negligence leads to war crimes, a private citizen’s negligence, even in self defense, leads to jail time, but when a peace officer shoots someone to guarantee their death post threat, it leads to a shallow debate legitimizing an implied license to kill for any reason.

The lesson from the London incident is that extreme negligence from an officer should not be met by simply by a standard inquiry. As a former resident of Toronto and London with training in the legal field in both communities, the public in both cities have always had a generally positive view of their police services. When one officer commits a crime and delegitimizes the role of all peace officers in a society, the first instinct of the entire force should not be to justify the act and placate the public with studies and policy reviews. For a public to have faith in their protection, criminals must be detained and charged, even if they are dressed in blue. Without a swift response to the side of justice, the public will assume officers have a license to kill and that they will use it on all citizens whether guilty or innocent. This crisis will only end when the one officer who took to extreme violence as a response to their incident is in front of a judge, being treated as an equal to all of his neighbors. That is the only legitimate response.